Developments in the instrument field have shown a need for testing and calibration of instruments which sense, target track or otherwise reference from the source of heat or infrared (IR) spectrum energy. Such a testing and calibration instrument has heretofore not been made available in a collimator. Collimators have heretofore only produced visible spectrum energy to provide a coherent, collimated beam of visible light for reference and testing purposes. Some lasers are also used as calibration and testing instruments, however, lasers are not optical collimators and instead depend on crystal lattice excitement for uni-directional beam projection of various energy spectra. Moreover, particularly when simulating the IR emission characteristics of turbojet powered aerospace vehicles, lasers are often unsuitable because of the danger of working around the high intensity energy of a typical laser.
The present invention is an IR collimator which projects a beam of coherent, collimated heat energy. Intensity of the infrared radiation can be varied as desired in temperature for various calibration purposes. The collimator is a calibration instrument and while it performs no calibration function by itself, the projection beam is used as a reference beam by other instruments and sensors. The collimator device is a precision instrument and is relatively low in cost for the purpose.